Americans are losing more than 300 hours a year — roughly 13 full days — to the combined demands of meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking, and cleanup, according to a new survey from Tempo, the ready-to-heat meal delivery service developed by the team behind Home Chef, a subsidiary of The Kroger Co.

The survey, released July 14, 2026, found that U.S. consumers spend more than six hours each week on food-related tasks. Tempo is framing that figure as a rallying point for its so-called "Cook Never Club," a positioning concept aimed squarely at Millennials and Gen Z consumers who increasingly view reclaimed time as a marker of personal wellness.

What This Means for Operators

For foodservice and hospitality professionals, the data underscores a consumer behavior shift that extends well beyond meal kit subscriptions. Ready-to-heat and prepared-meal formats have been gaining shelf and delivery share as operators across segments compete for the same discretionary food dollars. When a consumer spends six-plus hours each week on home food tasks, every minute saved by a restaurant, ghost kitchen, or meal delivery brand becomes a tangible value proposition — not just a convenience pitch.

Home Chef's move to develop a distinct ready-to-heat brand in Tempo reflects a broader industry pattern: established meal kit players are diversifying their portfolios toward lower-friction formats to retain customers who have graduated past the assembly-required model. That trend sits at the heart of restaurant delivery and off-premise strategy conversations happening across the industry right now.

Targeting the Time-Starved Consumer

The six-hours-per-week finding is significant for retail foodservice buyers and restaurant marketers alike. It provides a concrete, quantified consumer pain point that brands can reference when positioning prepared and ready-to-eat offerings. The framing of "time as the new currency of wellness" signals that Tempo — and, by extension, Home Chef and The Kroger Co. — intends to compete not just on taste or price, but on the emotional and lifestyle value of time savings.

As beverage and food delivery formats continue to evolve, operators should watch how well-funded retail hybrids like Tempo use survey-driven marketing to shape consumer expectations around convenience. When a major grocery-backed brand defines the benchmark at six hours of weekly food friction, it sets a comparison standard that independent restaurants and foodservice operators will inevitably be measured against — whether they want to be or not.

For coverage of the broader meal delivery and prepared-foods landscape, Food & Beverage Magazine has tracked the category's evolution across retail and direct-to-consumer channels.

Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.